Monday, January 19, 2015

If we don’t transform teacher
unions now, our schools, our profession, and our democracy—what’s left of
it—will likely be destroyed. I know. I am from Wisconsin, the home of Scott
Walker and Paul Ryan

by Bob Peterson.

In 2011, in the wake of the largest workers uprising
in recent U.S. history, I was elected president of the Milwaukee Teachers’
Education Association (MTEA). Unfortunately, that spring uprising, although
massive and inspirational, was not strong enough to stop Gov. Walker from
enacting the most draconian anti-public sector labor law in the nation.

That law, known as Act 10, received support from the
Koch brothers and a cabal of national right-wing funders and organizations. It
was imposed on all public sector workers except the police and firefighter
unions that endorsed Walker and whose members are predominantly white and male.

Act 10 took away virtually all collective bargaining
rights, including the right to arbitration. It left intact only the right to
bargain base-wage increases up to the cost of living. The new law prohibited
“agency shops,” in which all employees of a bargaining unit pay union dues. It
also prohibited payroll deduction of dues. It imposed an unprecedented annual
recertification requirement on public sector unions, requiring a 51 percent
(not 50 percent plus one) vote of all eligible employees, counting anyone who
does not vote as a “no.” Using those criteria, Walker would never have been
elected.

Immediately following Act 10, Walker and the
Republican-dominated state legislature made the largest cuts to public
education of any state in the nation and gerrymandered state legislative
districts to privilege conservative, white-populated areas of the state.

Having decimated labor law and defunded public
education, Walker proceeded to expand statewide the private school voucher
program that has wreaked havoc on Milwaukee, and enacted one of the nation’s
most generous income tax deductions for private school tuition.

Under these conditions, public sector union
membership has plummeted, staff has been reduced, and resources to lobby,
organize, and influence elections have shrunk.

People familiar with Wisconsin’s progressive
history—in 1959, for example, we were the first state to legalize collective
bargaining for public sector workers—find these events startling. And they
should. If it happened in Wisconsin, it could happen anywhere.

And it has. In New Orleans, following Katrina,
unionized teachers were fired and the entire system charterized. Following
Wisconsin’s lead, Tennessee abolished the right for teachers to bargain
collectively. In Philadelphia, the School Reform Commission unilaterally
canceled its expired contract with the teacher union. In city after city,
privately run charter schools are dominating the education landscape.

Fortunately, teacher union activists across the
country are revitalizing their unions and standing up to these relentless
attacks. And this growing transformation of the teachers’ union movement may
well be the most important force in our nation to defend and improve public
schools and, in so doing, defend and improve our communities and what’s left of
our democratic institutions.

The revitalization builds on the strengths of
traditional “bread and butter” unionism. But it recognizes that our future
depends on redefining unionism from a narrow trade union model, focused almost
exclusively on protecting union members, to a broader vision that sees the
future of unionized workers tied directly to the interests of the entire
working class and the communities, particularly communities of color, in which
we live and work.

This is a sea change for teacher unions (and other
unions, too). But it’s not an easy one to make. It requires confronting racist
attitudes and past practices that have marginalized people of color both inside
and outside unions. It also means overcoming old habits and stagnant
organizational structures that weigh down efforts to expand internal democracy
and member engagement.

From Bread and Butter to Social Justice

The MTEA is a member of the National Education
Association (NEA), which has a long history of being staff-dominated. In some
locals, elected presidents were (and still are) just figureheads. Allan West, a
national NEA staff member, memorialized this staff-run union approach in a
widely distributed 1965 speech. According to West, the executive director was
the one who should be the public spokesperson, develop agendas for elected
executive boards, and direct most of the union’s affairs. This power structure
was written into our local’s constitution, and it had profound consequences.
When a member of a progressive rank-and-file caucus in Milwaukee was elected
president in 1991, for example, it took him six months just to get a key to the
office. For nearly a decade we pushed for a full-time release president, a
proposal resisted by most professional staff.

Meanwhile, by the late 1980s and into the ’90s,
teacher activists in Milwaukee were connecting with other rank-and-file teacher
union activists through Rethinking Schools and the newly formed National
Coalition of Education Activists (NCEA). In 1994, 29 teachers’ union activists
from both the NEA and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) met at the
Portland, Oregon, NCEA conference and issued a statement: “Social Justice
Unionism: A Working Draft” (see sidebar, p. 18).

Social justice unionism is an organizing model that
calls for a radical boost in internal union democracy and increased member
participation. This contrasts to a business model that is so dependent on staff
providing services that it disempowers members and concentrates power in the
hands of a small group of elected leaders and/or paid staff. An organizing
model, while still providing services to members, focuses on building union
power at the school level in alliance with parents, community groups, and other
social movements.

Three components of social justice unionism are like
the legs of a stool. Unions need all three to be balanced and strong:

•We organize for social justice in
our community and in our curriculum.

Unfortunately, few public sector unions in Wisconsin
adopted this model of unionism. As long as we had an agency shop and could
protect our members’ compensation and benefits, most members were happy.

We are now paying the price for defining our unions
as contract bargainers and enforcers. Today, when we try to sign up members,
many are aware that our collective bargaining rights have been severely
limited. Often they respond, “Why should I join?” Others think we don’t even
exist, as our identity has been so tightly woven to the contract.

Transforming a Local

Our challenge in Milwaukee was to transform a
staff-dominated, business/service-style teachers’ union into something quite
different. The local had focused narrowly on contract bargaining and
enforcement, with the staff playing the role of insurance agents who would
intervene on members’ behalf to solve their problems—instead of helping members
organize to solve their own problems. It was a codependent relationship—members
didn’t have to do much more than make a call to have their problems taken care
of, and staff didn’t have to go out to do the hard work of organizing members,
except for occasional mobilizations at contract time. The importance of
parent/community alliances was downplayed, and the union took the attitude that
it was not their responsibility—but rather the administration’s—to ensure
quality education.

A few years before I was elected MTEA president, our
local’s leadership agreed that the three legs of social justice unionism should
guide our work. But it’s easier to agree to a principle than to change old
habits and put new ideas into practice.

So when I stepped in as president of our local, the 22-member
elected executive board was split. There was a slim progressive majority,
including several people who were elected at the same time as I was. A few
people were allied with the old staff through friendship; others were scared of
any change because of the uncertainties fomented by Act 10.

Within four months, other leaders and I initiated a
campaign to “reimagine” our union to make it more democratic and participatory,
based on a vision of social justice unionism. Key elements of our local’s
“reimagine” campaign and our subsequent work include:

1Building strong ties and coalitions
with parent, community, and civic organizations, not only on educational
issues, but also on broader issues of community concern.

2Replacing collective bargaining with
collective action. With collective bargaining limited to only base wages, we
put more emphasis on organizing members to appear en masse at school board
meetings, to lobby individual school board members, and to enlist parents and
community members to do the same. One of our earliest victories was securing an
extra $5/hour (after the first hour) for educational assistants when they
“cover” a teacher’s classroom.

3Building our union’s capacity to
reclaim our profession by becoming the leading education organization in the
city and consistently promoting culturally responsive, social justice teaching.

4Transforming the internal dynamics
within our organization to increase member and leader participation, change the
role of professional staff, overhaul our communications with and among members,
and encourage members to lead our work.

To help make this work possible, within six months
the elected leadership decided to release two teachers to be organizers; three
months later we added two additional released teachers to head up a new
teaching and learning department. Eventually we also released an educational
assistant organizer. A year after my election, we amended the constitution to
shift certain powers from the staff to the elected leadership. Our new professional staff is committed to a broader vision of unionism
with an emphasis on organizing.

We did this all in an increasingly hostile, anti-labor,
and anti-public school environment. State budget cuts caused substantial
layoffs. Our massive mobilization of members and allies to recall Walker failed
because Walker outspent his Democratic opponent seven to one, and convinced
vast swaths of the white working class to vote their prejudice, not their class
interests. “We don’t want Wisconsin to become another Milwaukee,” Walker said.

Social Justice—Rooted in Alliances

The strength of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) 2012
strike, under the leadership of Karen Lewis, rested in large part on their
members’ connections to parent and community groups. In two other
cities—Portland, Oregon, and St. Paul, Minnesota—the unions put forth a vision
of “the schools our children deserve” patterned after a groundbreaking document
by the CTU. Their joint educator-community mobilizations were key factors in
forcing the local school districts to settle on contracts before a strike.

In Milwaukee, our main coalition work has been
building Schools and Communities United, a broad coalition of nearly two dozen
education and non-education groups that fights against school privatization and
for concrete educational improvements within the public schools.

The coalition grew out of an earlier group, the
Coalition to Stop the MPS Takeover, that—with allies on the school board and
state legislature—successfully fought a Democrats for Education Reform attempt
to get rid of the democratically elected Milwaukee school board. Three years
after that fight, the MTEA helped revive the coalition in order to fight the
Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce’s legislative plan to turn
Milwaukee into a New Orleans-style recovery zone.

As we organized press conferences, picket lines, and
lobby days, we realized we needed a more formal organizational structure and a
broader purpose. We wanted to move past reacting, being on the defensive, and
appearing to be only against things. After some intense planning
sessions, we renamed ourselves, created short- and long-term plans, and
formalized organizational membership.

Key to the coalition’s renewal was the development of
a 32-page booklet, Fulfill the Promise: The Schools and Communities Our
Children Deserve. Building on the work of the CTU, our document addresses
school issues and adds concerns of the broader community beyond the schoolhouse
door. Specifically, we critique the return of the “New Jim Crow” to Milwaukee.
The 19 groups issuing Fulfill the Promise included the NAACP, Voces de
la Frontera, Centro Hispano, ACLU, Milwaukee Inner City Congregations Allied
for Hope, Parents for Public Schools, Institute for Wisconsin’s Future,
Wisconsin Jobs Now, 9to5, Youth Empowered in the Struggle, and AFT and NEA
locals.

We released the document and eight-page summaries in
English and Spanish on May 17, 2014, the 60th anniversary of the Brown vs.
Board of Education decision. A march, program, and networking session
attracted more than 500 people and put our coalition on the map.

Currently the coalition’s three committees focus on
fighting school privatization, promoting community schools, and supporting
progressive legislation. We are part of a national community schools movement
that sees schools as hubs for social and health support, not only for the
students of the school but also for their families and the surrounding
community. The model seeks to build strong community-school ties and help
empower parents and community activists.

The coalition work is difficult. All participants
have other organizational priorities, making meetings and communication a
challenge. As we broaden the coalition, differences in strategies and
priorities emerge. This work reminds me of the words of activist/musician
Bernice Johnson Reagon, of Sweet Honey in the Rock: “If you are in a coalition
and you are comfortable, that coalition is not broad enough.”

Differences emerge in various ways. For example, as
we’ve discussed how schools need to improve, some community members believe
that a strong phonics emphasis will solve reading problems. Others see forced
adherence to a rigid basal reading program that downplays literature as a key
culprit. One way we have sought to bring such divergent perspectives together
is by focusing on proven practices that we can all agree on—such as
developmentally appropriate practices at the early childhood level.

In line with our reimagine campaign, we’ve worked
hard to build coalitions beyond those focused on education. Unfortunately, for
years the MTEA’s main coalition work was with the police and firefighter unions
to get rid of a city residency requirement. This did not sit well with the
communities of color we serve. In contrast, in the past three years, the MTEA
has been a strong supporter of Voces de la Frontera and their youth group,
Youth Empowered in the Struggle, standing with them for immigrant rights, for
in-state tuition for undocumented high school graduates, and in solidarity with
a long strike by immigrant workers at Palermo’s Pizza. We have supported a
variety of other community issues, including raising the minimum wage, paid
sick days, expanding healthcare coverage, voter rights, incarceration reform,
and stopping unfair hiring practices at a major federal housing project. Our
support ranges from financial aid to street protests, press conferences,
lobbying, picket lines, and electoral work.

Although coalition work is essential for building
mutual trust and creating sustainable social movements, its success will
ultimately depend on our capacity to involve significant numbers of
rank-and-file and community members in coalition activities that directly
affect their lives.

Reclaiming Our Profession

Another essential pathway to a revitalized teachers’
union movement is organizing our members to be leaders on all K–12 educational
issues. Although some locals have taken on the hard issues of teacher
evaluation through peer assistance and review programs, that is only the
beginning.

For us, this has meant making sure new teacher
orientation and mentoring are available and of high quality. It also has meant
working to sustain the quality teacher evaluation and mentoring program that
was in our contract before it ended under Act 10. I tell my members that if
there is a classroom down the hall or a school down the street that you would
not send your own child to, then we have work to do.

In the past, too often union activists ignored
curricular issues, dismissing them as the administration’s responsibilities. We
failed to make sure practicing classroom teachers were intimately involved in
educational innovations and initiatives. We need to become the “go-to”
organizations in our communities on issues ranging from teacher development to
anti-racist education to quality assessments.

At the MTEA, this has required a change in some of
our priorities and rearrangement of resources. Our two full-time release
directors of teaching and learning play a key role in this work. Soon after
becoming president, I proposed that we set up a nonprofit organization, the
Milwaukee Center for Teaching, Learning, and Public Education. The center
focuses most of its attention on teaching and learning issues, but also
promotes public education among parents and the community. It has a pro-public
school canvassing program, funded by the school district, that goes door to
door, encouraging parents to send their children to the Milwaukee Public
Schools (MPS).

Our teaching and learning work has focused on
reclaiming our profession in three primary ways:

3We partner with the MPS
administration through labor/management committees to ensure maximum success of
district initiatives and practices.

For years, many members viewed our union office (if
they knew where it was) as a place to go if you were “in trouble” or had a
question about insurance or retirement. A scattering of members attended
committee meetings. Now our offices are bustling with multiple committee
meetings, inservice trainings, book circles (for college credit), and
individual help sessions on professional development plans or licensure issues.
Recently, when the district failed to provide quality inservice training on
student learning objectives that are a mandated part of the new state teacher
evaluation system, we offered workshops that drew 150 teachers at a time. We
had to schedule additional workshops once word spread. More teachers were
convinced to join our union, too, because our teaching and learning services
are only open to members.

Another example of our success in reclaiming our
profession is in the area of early childhood education, where our teachers have
been very active. Working with allies on the school board and in the community,
we used collective action at board meetings and hearings, and our connections
to parent and university partners to convince the MPS administration and entire
school board to mandate 45 minutes of uninterrupted play in 4- and 5-year-old
kindergarten classes. We also won a staggered start for all kindergartens: one
third of each class attends on three separate days at the beginning of the year
so that teachers, students, and parents can build better connections from day
one.

Our bilingual/English language learner committee,
which holds its meeting in the heart of the Latina/o community, includes
teachers, community activists, and parents. We have taken up a broad range of
issues and mobilizations, including convincing the school board to
systematically expand bilingual education programs throughout the district.

At the school level, union activists have worked
closely with parents in two key areas: school-based canvassing around issues
and pro-education candidates, and organizing to remove ineffective principals.

But we have a long way to go; at times it feels like
a losing battle. Each year more teaching and planning time is stolen from
teachers by new initiatives and mandates, most of which are linked to
technology, tests, and standards. New teachers are learning to define teaching
as data collection and more data collection. The heavy workload imposed on all
teachers shrinks the time and energy they can dedicate to being union
activists.

With the plethora of federal and state mandates and
the datatization of our culture, even the best-intentioned school boards and
principals balk at promoting policies that support the craft of teaching.

It’s clear to me that what is necessary is a national
movement led by activists at the local, state, and national levels within the
AFT and NEA—in alliance with parents, students, and community groups—to take
back our classrooms and our profession.

Promoting Social Justice Teaching

A key, but less talked about, aspect of social
justice unionism is promoting social justice content in our curriculum. We need
to fight for curriculum that is anti-racist, pro-justice and that prepares our
students for the civic and ecological challenges ahead.

It’s important for teacher unions to promote social
justice in the classroom for two main reasons: First, it educates students—the
future members of society—in how to be active, critical participants in that
society. Second, it educates teachers. Too many teachers don’t know the real
people’s history of our nation. And that includes labor history. Many years
ago, I interviewed the late historian Howard Zinn, who said, “Teachers not only
need to be strong unionists, but they have to be teachers of unionism.” The
more successful we are in promoting social justice teaching among our members,
the greater will be their capacity and willingness to be active in our broader
political campaigns.

To that end, we have hosted workshops and other
activities. For example, our book circles have read Lisa Delpit’s Multiplication
Is for White People. Teacher advisors to Youth Empowered in the Struggle
participated in a role play workshop on the U.S.-Mexican border.

Promoting social justice teaching also includes
organizing against its opposite—reactionary curriculum policies and standards
promoted by school boards, state textbook adoption committees, or publicly
funded voucher or privately run charter schools.

A Final Challenge

With the Wisconsin state legislature dominated by
right-wing Republicans waiting to use any perceived or real weakness in public
schools as an excuse to accelerate their school privatization schemes, we must
proceed with caution in our public criticism of and organizing around school
district policies.

On the one hand, we need to fight to improve our
public schools by organizing our members and allies to speak out against a
variety of problems, including poorly rolled-out initiatives; large class
sizes; lack of music, art, physical education, counselors, and librarians; restrictive
curriculum mandates; and rogue principals. On the other hand, speaking out can
play into the hands of the privatizers as they seek to expand privately run
charters in what is already the nation’s largest publicly funded private school
voucher program.

This dilemma forces us to carefully consider our
approach at the district level. We use a variety of tactics, including
participation on labor/management committees, lobbying school board members,
and balancing mass mobilizations with the threat of mass mobilizations. In the
end, we recognize a key element in fighting privatization is to improve our
public schools.

A Social Movement for Educational
Justice

And that’s a hard thing to do in face of the
corporate shit storm that has engulfed much of public education over the past
few decades. But, just as I have been amazed at the resilience of some of my
most beleaguered students, so, too, am I heartened by the increasing number of
teacher, student, and community activists organizing for educational justice.

Rank-and-file union members and growing numbers of
union leaders recognize the need for new approaches to fight attacks on public
schools and our profession. In addition to the work in Milwaukee, Chicago,
Portland, and St. Paul, rank-and-file caucuses and local leaders in many areas
of the country are having increased success moving their unions toward a social
justice, member-based stance.

In Los Angeles, an activist caucus, Union Power, won
leadership of the United Teachers Los Angeles, the second largest teacher local
in the country. The Union Power slate, headed by Alex Caputo-Pearl, has an
organizing vision for their union. They have worked with parents fighting
school cuts and recognize the importance of teacher-community alliances.

In Massachusetts, Barbara Madeloni, a leader of the
University of Massachusetts EdTPA boycott (see “Stanford/Pearson Test for New
Teachers Draws Fire,” winter 2012–13), was elected president of the
Massachusetts Teachers Association last May. She ran with the Educators for a
Democratic Union caucus and promises to mobilize teachers in the struggle
against high-stakes standardized testing.

On the national level, the sentiments and actions of
members attending recent AFT and NEA conventions are more militant and focused
on building organizing capacity internally and in alliance with other groups to
fight the corporate reformers, obsessive testing, and privatization. The
national “days of action” of the recently formed Alliance to Reclaim Our
Schools have encouraged locals to build community coalitions and take an
activist approach to fighting privatization and promoting public school-based
improvements.

Will it be enough, soon enough? Will unions be able
to transform themselves to go beyond their past limitations, reclaim our profession,
and participate in the broader social justice movements? Will progressive union
leadership and caucuses be able to convince recalcitrant members and staff
stuck in an untenable past?

Those are the questions activists will answer in the
next few years as we organize for social justice in our classrooms, our
schools, our unions, and our communities.

A Call to Education Activists

In August 1994, at an institute
sponsored by the National Coalition of Education Activists, grassroots
teachers’ union activists affiliated with both the NEA and AFT developed a
statement: “Social Justice Unionism: A Call to Education Activists.“ Here are
the key components. The full statement is available at rethinkingschools.org/special_reports/union/sjun.shtml.
Social justice unionism retains the best of traditional unionism, borrows from
what has been called “professional unionism,” and is informed by a broader
concept of our members’ self-interests and by a deeper social vision. Social
justice unionism should:

1Defend the rights of its members
while fighting for the rights and needs of the broader community and students.

2Recognize that the parents and
neighbors of our students are key allies, and build strategic alliances with
parents, labor unions, and community groups.

3Fully involve rank-and-file members
in running the union and initiate widespread discussion on how education unions
should respond to the crises in education and society.

4Put teachers and others who work in
classrooms at the center of school reform agendas, ensuring that they take
ownership of reform initiatives.

5Encourage those who work with
children to use methods of instruction and curricula that will promote racial
and gender equity, combat racism and prejudice, encourage critical thinking
about our society’s problems, and nurture an active, reflective citizenry that
is committed to real democracy and social and economic justice.

6Forcefully advocate for a radical
restructuring of American education.

7Aggressively educate and mobilize
its membership to fight for social justice in all areas of society.

Bob Peterson
(bob.e.peterson@gmail.com), a 5th-grade teacher in the Milwaukee Public
Schools, is currently president of the Milwaukee Teachers’ Education
Association. With Michael Charney, he co-edited Transforming Teacher Unions:
Fighting for Better Schools and Social Justice (Rethinking Schools, 1999).